Make fun all you want, but my friend Meg (Shut up, Meg!) bought one of these a few months ago and still hasn't bought gas for it. It's her daily commuter in Phoenix. Her husband is an engineer at Boeing, and these people had the foresight to start hoarding Apple stock before OSX or even i-Anything came out. I trust their judgment.

If I lived in an urban area, I would totally consider an electric vehicle. It's the future, baby. And I thank God for the brave early adopters that get these things off the ground.

I've got a 2012 Volt. Love the thing. Lease deals really seal it, since the depreciation is so low. Great fun to drive. It really feel like a luxury car in handling and low end torque. If you use electricity, you pay about $1.50-2.50 a gallon equivalent gas, and if your commute is right, you really never use gas unless taking a long trip. And if your employer lets you plug in at work, or you have a garage in an apartment complex on their circuit, your electricity is free.

ecmoRandomNumbers:Make fun all you want, but my friend Meg (Shut up, Meg!) bought one of these a few months ago and still hasn't bought gas for it. It's her daily commuter in Phoenix. Her husband is an engineer at Boeing, and these people had the foresight to start hoarding Apple stock before OSX or even i-Anything came out. I trust their judgment.

If I lived in an urban area, I would totally consider an electric vehicle. It's the future, baby. And I thank God for the brave early adopters that get these things off the ground.

Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas.

It's not designed to be a mass market product, with a custom engine that involves some manufacturing processes we'd rather move away from. The long term plan is to learn from the Volt 1.0 and move in the direction of parts commonality with other small class platforms (Chevy Cruze) to bring the price down.

The Volt is offered with the mindset of "Some people will pay a premium for performance, some people will pay a premium for luxury, and some people will pay for this." You don't expect a 750iL to sell at the level as a Civic, same with the Volt.

/and some people actually live a life style where the car fits them perfectly//GM engineer/the general belief has always been "no real hope of mass market love for it until it hovers around 30k"

Never understood it. Seems like the same guys who want energy independance simultaneously believe we only should use gasoline for transportation. Of course the same guys are against giving out birth control to poor people while simultaneously giving welfare to the same poor people who had babies because they couldn't afford birth control so there you go.

BadReligion:ecmoRandomNumbers: Make fun all you want, but my friend Meg (Shut up, Meg!) bought one of these a few months ago and still hasn't bought gas for it. It's her daily commuter in Phoenix. Her husband is an engineer at Boeing, and these people had the foresight to start hoarding Apple stock before OSX or even i-Anything came out. I trust their judgment.

If I lived in an urban area, I would totally consider an electric vehicle. It's the future, baby. And I thank God for the brave early adopters that get these things off the ground.

Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas.

Was going to mention that. At the very least, she should add some Sta-bil or other fuel stabilizer to prevent gas varnishing.

BadReligion:ecmoRandomNumbers: Make fun all you want, but my friend Meg (Shut up, Meg!) bought one of these a few months ago and still hasn't bought gas for it. It's her daily commuter in Phoenix. Her husband is an engineer at Boeing, and these people had the foresight to start hoarding Apple stock before OSX or even i-Anything came out. I trust their judgment.

If I lived in an urban area, I would totally consider an electric vehicle. It's the future, baby. And I thank God for the brave early adopters that get these things off the ground.

Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas.

BadReligion:ecmoRandomNumbers: Make fun all you want, but my friend Meg (Shut up, Meg!) bought one of these a few months ago and still hasn't bought gas for it. It's her daily commuter in Phoenix. Her husband is an engineer at Boeing, and these people had the foresight to start hoarding Apple stock before OSX or even i-Anything came out. I trust their judgment.

If I lived in an urban area, I would totally consider an electric vehicle. It's the future, baby. And I thank God for the brave early adopters that get these things off the ground.

Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas.

I'd like to see some stats on how that thing handles the Minnesota winter. I'm due for a new car this year and am considering a Volt (which are actually available here now), but I get the feeling that a dealer will tell me that it works "just fine".

I have a Civic hybrid right now. Thing gets 45-50mpg in the summer and 25 in the winter if I'm lucky.

So there are 31,132 people completely devoid of taste, style, or substance in the world. Or at least when it comes to their choice in automobiles. Got it.

I'll take my fossil fuel burning six-speed manual rice rocket any day of the week over any hybrid or full electric car, aside from a tesla, of course. But who has the money for a Tesla anyway? I sure don't.

ringersol:BadReligion: "Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas."

The Volt will actually run the engine from time to time to mitigate the problems that stem from having a modern ICE sitting idle for months.

Look at that, you're right. From wiki:"Also the engine management system monitors the time between engine running and it is programmed to prompt the driver to run past the 40-mile (64 km) before recharging in order to consume some gasoline. If the driver does not run on gasoline, the system will automatically run the maintenance mode which starts the engine to consume some of the aging fuel and circulate the fluids within the engine."

ecmoRandomNumbers:Make fun all you want, but my friend Meg (Shut up, Meg!) bought one of these a few months ago and still hasn't bought gas for it. It's her daily commuter in Phoenix. Her husband is an engineer at Boeing, and these people had the foresight to start hoarding Apple stock before OSX or even i-Anything came out. I trust their judgment.

If I lived in an urban area, I would totally consider an electric vehicle. It's the future, baby. And I thank God for the brave early adopters that get these things off the ground.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- - --------------------------------------------------------------Are you serious? Pay twice the price for the car, and you have to replace the battery for $5,000 in five or six years. You and your friends (I don't care how smart you think they are) are just prepaying for your gas.

/Besides that,,,isn't all that plugged in energy thing coming from a coal power plant. Much less efficent than something that burns gasoline locally!/And now...I have to go to lunch.

The team I worked for last year used Chevrolet engines so we got a few Volts to drive around for the year. They were pretty boring. About 33 miles on a full charge, top speed limited o 101 mph, no soul at all.

Minarets:Chevy has been offering leases at $289/mo which is much better than buying the car outright right now.

Leasing is highly preferred as that way the company can always opt not to renew lease if turns out the engineers farked something up on generation one. Until the cars prove themselves in consumer hands there is some resistance to just letting them off into the wild and having to recall 500,000 of them later due to a fark up. The general idea is attractive lease options and at the end of the lease if GM prefers to feed the car into the car crusher as opposed to selling them off, we'll over the leasee owner loyalty credit and an attractive offer on the next generation platform.

/there are still active EV-1s in GM hands, I've taken them home for weekends before, however we pulled them from the consumer market due to concerns over how they'd hold up in the long run and not wanting to have to do a bunch of recalls on them 6 years later

The Prius is ugly... wouldn't be caught dead in one of those...also, I prefer American cars (I know, I know, some of you will call me dumb for this)Had a Honda years ago, ok car, boring as hell, just as expensive as its American counterpartI would love a Volt... I see at least 4 a day in Suburban Houston..

/Have a 2008 Chevy Malibu, will either trade in for Volt or new Malibu

YodaBlues:ringersol: BadReligion: "Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas."

The Volt will actually run the engine from time to time to mitigate the problems that stem from having a modern ICE sitting idle for months.

Look at that, you're right. From wiki:"Also the engine management system monitors the time between engine running and it is programmed to prompt the driver to run past the 40-mile (64 km) before recharging in order to consume some gasoline. If the driver does not run on gasoline, the system will automatically run the maintenance mode which starts the engine to consume some of the aging fuel and circulate the fluids within the engine."

That's pretty neat. Shame it's so expensive though.

Pretty neat until it fires itself up in your enclosed garage...yeah , no thanks

ha-ha-guy:It's not designed to be a mass market product, with a custom engine that involves some manufacturing processes we'd rather move away from. The long term plan is to learn from the Volt 1.0 and move in the direction of parts commonality with other small class platforms (Chevy Cruze) to bring the price down.

The Volt is offered with the mindset of "Some people will pay a premium for performance, some people will pay a premium for luxury, and some people will pay for this." You don't expect a 750iL to sell at the level as a Civic, same with the Volt.

/and some people actually live a life style where the car fits them perfectly//GM engineer/the general belief has always been "no real hope of mass market love for it until it hovers around 30k"

OK, so riddle me this: why doesn't anyone market an electric-only car to the little old lady crowd? My mom recalls an old lady that drove a 1910 electric around town into the late 1960s. Got her where she needed to go, which was never far. Very little maintenance (which is good for old ladies who hate going to service stations to get ripped off). Maybe an electric-only Volt would sell even less than the regular one, but the development's been done for the "normal" Volt, so only minimal re-design would be needed. The whole Volt thing is a market experiment; may as well extend it a little. (Heck, even have the dealerships offer gas rental cars for long trips if Granny drives three hours once every three months to see the grandkids.)

The Fifth Dentist:YodaBlues: ringersol: BadReligion: "Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas."

The Volt will actually run the engine from time to time to mitigate the problems that stem from having a modern ICE sitting idle for months.

Look at that, you're right. From wiki:"Also the engine management system monitors the time between engine running and it is programmed to prompt the driver to run past the 40-mile (64 km) before recharging in order to consume some gasoline. If the driver does not run on gasoline, the system will automatically run the maintenance mode which starts the engine to consume some of the aging fuel and circulate the fluids within the engine."

That's pretty neat. Shame it's so expensive though.

Pretty neat until it fires itself up in your enclosed garage...yeah , no thanks

The Fifth Dentist:YodaBlues: ringersol: BadReligion: "Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas."

The Volt will actually run the engine from time to time to mitigate the problems that stem from having a modern ICE sitting idle for months.

Look at that, you're right. From wiki:"Also the engine management system monitors the time between engine running and it is programmed to prompt the driver to run past the 40-mile (64 km) before recharging in order to consume some gasoline. If the driver does not run on gasoline, the system will automatically run the maintenance mode which starts the engine to consume some of the aging fuel and circulate the fluids within the engine."

That's pretty neat. Shame it's so expensive though.

Pretty neat until it fires itself up in your enclosed garage...yeah , no thanks

The engine only goes in maintenance mode while your driving it numbnuts.

People who feel compelled to judge one another based on their purchasing decisions prefer conspicuous activity.( e.g. the conspicuous consumption of an SUV or sportscar. The conspicuous frugality of sleeping on the floor and eating Ramen. )So anything considered and understated is inherently undesirable and it's just a matter of their finding some justification for the emotional conclusion.

YodaBlues:The Fifth Dentist: YodaBlues: ringersol: BadReligion: "Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas."

The Volt will actually run the engine from time to time to mitigate the problems that stem from having a modern ICE sitting idle for months.

Look at that, you're right. From wiki:"Also the engine management system monitors the time between engine running and it is programmed to prompt the driver to run past the 40-mile (64 km) before recharging in order to consume some gasoline. If the driver does not run on gasoline, the system will automatically run the maintenance mode which starts the engine to consume some of the aging fuel and circulate the fluids within the engine."

That's pretty neat. Shame it's so expensive though.

Pretty neat until it fires itself up in your enclosed garage...yeah , no thanks

The engine only goes in maintenance mode while your driving it numbnuts.

Ed_Severson:The team I worked for last year used Chevrolet engines so we got a few Volts to drive around for the year. They were pretty boring. About 33 miles on a full charge, top speed limited o 101 mph, no soul at all.

At $4k? Maybe. At $40k? fark off.

Unless you are a professional race-car driver, you have no business, whatsoever, doing higher than 101MPH.

Its like buying a first-generation anything. A very large percentage of those interested will assume it is full of kinks and wait for the 2nd generation (or 3rd). Once the 2nd generation is out, it will be much clearer whether this will really take off.

jethro1138:I'd like to see some stats on how that thing handles the Minnesota winter. I'm due for a new car this year and am considering a Volt (which are actually available here now), but I get the feeling that a dealer will tell me that it works "just fine".

I have a Civic hybrid right now. Thing gets 45-50mpg in the summer and 25 in the winter if I'm lucky.

It's basically a 3,700 pound front wheel drive car. So it has the same benefits and fall backs as any other heavy FWD car. It will push the front wheels down to pavement for traction nicely, but the downside is it will also push down and beach itself on ruts. One general factor is with the rear wheels set so far back, you don't have weight in the trunk that makes the car pivot on its rear wheels (ex: weight in the trunk makes the front wheels lift up, more a problem on pickups when people load the bed improperly). The weight is either on the front wheels or between the front and rear wheels.

That said, you're pretty much farked in deep snow. Also keep in mind electric you don't have a torque curve you're used to from a gas engine, so when you're dealing with snow and you hit the "gas", you might get an unpleasant result. Not that the Volt produces that much torque.

As a side note, for winter MPG, you can click on "Hold Mode" when dicking around in the snow. That tells the 2013 Volt not to use the battery, so you don't suck it dry getting yourself going on a slippery hill. You can just outsource that job to the gas engine and the car perform more like you are used to in terms of revving the gas engine to go places.

ecmoRandomNumbers:Make fun all you want, but my friend Meg (Shut up, Meg!) bought one of these a few months ago and still hasn't bought gas for it. It's her daily commuter in Phoenix. Her husband is an engineer at Boeing, and these people had the foresight to start hoarding Apple stock before OSX or even i-Anything came out. I trust their judgment.

If I lived in an urban area, I would totally consider an electric vehicle. It's the future, baby. And I thank God for the brave early adopters that get these things off the ground.

We bought one in Sept. Best. Car. Ever. I use it mostly around town and it takes about 2 months before you have to do a fill up. Great car.

ha-ha-guy:jethro1138: I'd like to see some stats on how that thing handles the Minnesota winter. I'm due for a new car this year and am considering a Volt (which are actually available here now), but I get the feeling that a dealer will tell me that it works "just fine".

I have a Civic hybrid right now. Thing gets 45-50mpg in the summer and 25 in the winter if I'm lucky.

It's basically a 3,700 pound front wheel drive car. So it has the same benefits and fall backs as any other heavy FWD car. It will push the front wheels down to pavement for traction nicely, but the downside is it will also push down and beach itself on ruts. One general factor is with the rear wheels set so far back, you don't have weight in the trunk that makes the car pivot on its rear wheels (ex: weight in the trunk makes the front wheels lift up, more a problem on pickups when people load the bed improperly). The weight is either on the front wheels or between the front and rear wheels.

That said, you're pretty much farked in deep snow. Also keep in mind electric you don't have a torque curve you're used to from a gas engine, so when you're dealing with snow and you hit the "gas", you might get an unpleasant result. Not that the Volt produces that much torque.

As a side note, for winter MPG, you can click on "Hold Mode" when dicking around in the snow. That tells the 2013 Volt not to use the battery, so you don't suck it dry getting yourself going on a slippery hill. You can just outsource that job to the gas engine and the car perform more like you are used to in terms of revving the gas engine to go places.

Because the sales figures of the Nissan Leaf would not justify the cost of making an electric only EV for the little old lady crowd. It would take significantly more than minimal redesign due to the fact we can't use the gas motor to assist, it would be a whole new electric engine and then trying to sell it to a crowd who was planning on hanging onto that old Buick until they died. Cutting out just the gas engine would not significant drop sticker price either (gas engines are easy, we know how to make those cheap). It would leave us with an expensive car that we could promise no more than 100 miles out of to try to sell to a very niche market.

Better to make the Volt, sell it to everyone, and maybe in a few generations we can make an all battery car with a 250 mile range and sell it to the light use crowd.

/Chrysler had an all electric idea that they scrapped since they figured the sales wouldn't justify the cost//technology improves incrementally

please:BadReligion: ecmoRandomNumbers: Make fun all you want, but my friend Meg (Shut up, Meg!) bought one of these a few months ago and still hasn't bought gas for it. It's her daily commuter in Phoenix. Her husband is an engineer at Boeing, and these people had the foresight to start hoarding Apple stock before OSX or even i-Anything came out. I trust their judgment.

If I lived in an urban area, I would totally consider an electric vehicle. It's the future, baby. And I thank God for the brave early adopters that get these things off the ground.

Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas.

BadReligion:Gas only stays good for about 6 months, so she should use up her tank soon or it will be filled with bad gas.

The Volt requires premium grade gasoline. The fuel system is also sealed above and beyond what you'll find on a typical vehicle to help prevent evaporation loss and fouling.

Lastly, the Volt keeps track of the fuel in the tank and will use some of it up on purpose, needed or not, so you put a bit more in and help keep things fresh. They call this the "engine fuel and maintenance mode." It also serves to circulate the oil and generally keep things functional if the engine hasn't run in a long time.

So at the end of the day, the Volt needs gasoline, regardless of how far or how often you drive.=Smidge=

Also a shame?The visual design has no personality and the ICE can still directly drive the wheels at highway speeds. Meaning it still has a drive train and all the associated costs, complexity and bullshiat.

Never understood it. Seems like the same guys who want energy independance simultaneously believe we only should use gasoline for transportation. Of course the same guys are against giving out birth control to poor people while simultaneously giving welfare to the same poor people who had babies because they couldn't afford birth control so there you go.

It's an extension of Prius hate. Owning my trusty '02 has been like defending an effing masters thesis. If I have to explain the "dust to dust" article to some chucklefark one more time, I'm going to kick a puppy. I think it's because Prii and electric cars bring up two things that people dislike: change and hippies.